Science Of The Day
Out of context: Reply #339
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New Quantum Algorithm Factors Numbers With One Qubit
The catch: It would require the energy of a few medium-size stars.
Quantum computers still can’t do much. Almost every time researchers have found something the high-tech machines should one day excel at, a classical algorithm comes along that can do it just as well on a regular computer. One notable exception? Taking apart numbers. In 1994, the mathematician Peter Shor devised an algorithm that would let quantum computers factor big numbers exponentially faster than classical machines. That speedup matters because a fast-factoring algorithm could render most data-encryption methods useless. For more than 30 years, researchers have been trying to boost and guard against the power of future quantum computers.